The Joys the Wild Coast has to Offer.

Well, I've less than a week left in South Africa and I've had an absolute ball. The current group of work riders plus one staff and the proprietor of Wild Coast Horse Trails have just been out on a trail for five days. The trip in a nutshell? We rode from Kei Mouth to Trennery's to Wavecrest, along the Eastern Coast of South Africa.

Consequently, you see a lot of sand and surf! Two nights are spent at each place in gorgeous rooms on the beach. The trail involved around 3-5 hours in the saddle each day, long canters up hills and across the beach; a gorgeous gallop and lots of breath taking scenery - a ship wreck, sand dunes, rocks, hills and beach, cliffs and valleys and South African culture.

Before the trail I had the time to ride 15 of the horses here - up roads working on fitness; on trails round the 400 hectare property and at the beach and school horses in flat and jumping - what a great riding experience!

I also got to work with a foal that was born the night I arrived, work with weanlings, yearlings and stallions; free lunge endurance horses and learn Join Up and start two 3 year old mares under saddle. Oh, and I've raided an impressive horse library here, making note of a half-dozen must haves for my collection and have read five books while here - relaxing!

Yesterday we got to go to the Inkwenkwezi Game Reserve and saw warthog, giraffes, a rhino, many types of antelope, lions, ostriches, wildebeast, kingfisher, elephants and finished up playing with cheetah and lion cubs - just gorgeous. Photos to follow when I get home!

For the horse riding enthusiast, you can't pass this working/riding holiday up!

"Good horses make short miles."

Invest in the Best

5 Top Tips to further/establish your equine career.

Invest in yourself:
If you're looking to improve yourself for a particular field but struggle with the idea of a full time focus on acquiring skills or a piece of paper; consider work and study. For example, I was working on a horse stud and am interested in teaching, so took up a correspondence course for instructing while working. I could do it at my own pace and because it all relates to horses, things I was doing at work (although not directly related to teaching people to ride) were of benefit to me in this study.
Many put off furthering their skills/starting in a new area until they can focus solely on this decision and consequently end up not doing anything at all.

Invest in others:
Make yourself known; get out there. Attend events related to an area you are working or wish to work. It is possible to do so through work, for example I attend horse sales with my job and have received other work through being seen at these sales. People start to recognise you if you get out there often enough and if you're taking the time to get to know them and what they do, you may just find it'll help you in your particular focus.

Invest in education:
Consider saving to invest in furthering your knowledge - books, a particular course, even travel to a particular property or country to focus on a certain discipline. If this is the place where you can get access to the 'experts', then consider going there.

Invest in the future:
Set goals for tasks that would be of benefit for you to have achieved and find ways to learn or master that particular skill. When I first started out working on a stud, through my six weeks of work placement leading up to that employment I did all I could - injections, dealt with the birth of foals, handled the stallions, mares for covers, helped with vetting, feeding. In the last week I concluded the only thing I hadn't done was drive the tractor around the farm... A rather amused boss obliged to this request, also!

Invest in your industry:
Find out if there are any clubs, federations, etc that you can be a part of in a particular industry you want to work/be known. Many of these clubs have a fee which means you're putting money into that industry, proving you're taking it seriously but as an added benefit, you're being informed of events, changes, important things in relation to this field. Also, you're getting to know key people in this industry.


"A horse is like a violin, first it must be tuned, and when tuned it must be accurately played."

The Value of Planning and Planting

Many people that are strong influences in my life teach and agree on the value of planning and planting - my parents, pastors at church, people I work with - all of whom are successful people that I look up to.

It is so important to (metaphorically speaking) plant a seed - discover your life's desire - and work (plan) on having this come to pass. For me, it's of course my property and reaching people through it and doing what I love.

One of the beautiful men I work with up in the country when doing the whole stud thing works on a few different studs as well as running his own 50 acre property. He has commented often on how he wishes he'd planted trees on first purchasing the property over seven years ago. The time has quickly passed and he knows it would have been smart to take the time initially, to see the fruits now.

In the middle of a strong drought for us here in Australia, the upkeep of horses is proving to be difficult and very expensive - especially for those utilising these gorgeous animals as part of a business. My current boss who has the facilities to keep horses is taking advantage of this time, getting good horses cheap because she can afford to keep them while others can't. I'd much rather be in this boat than considering selling my beloved equine because I couldn't afford to keep him!

Always with my (yet to be purchased) property in mind, I am looking for ways to be able to set myself up to be self sufficient so that I won't suffer from problems that could have been at least lessened due to planning.

Trees provide shelter, wind breaks, shade and more importantly at this time I'm coming to realise, can work well as fodder. My boss has recently been pruning back many trees on her property - not as a big garden clean up, but because certain trees are quite appealing to the horses and work as a gut filler in this time where grass and hay is scarce.

The worker who has implanted into my brain the importance of planting trees on your property when first purchased has mentioned how valuable something like a lucerne tree can be - it's a big bushy plant that can act as shade or a windbreak but more importantly, is appealing to horses and if planted and allowed to grow, can be of great value in times of a drought. Curious about other trees that could do the same thing, I did a search on the net and have found a half dozen trees that could be used as fodder (and wind breaks, shade, fire protection, etc).

I also stumbled across the book - Managing Horses on Small Properties by Jane Myers - which I purchased online (74 horse books in My Library, now!). Check out http://www.landlinks.com/?nid=20&pid=4896 for info on this book. Listed in this book for good fodder trees are:
- Willows, especially Weeping Willows - drought tolerant
- Poplars - tolerate dry periods
- Carob
- Honey Locust
- Tagasaste (Lucerne tree)

Also take a look at Landscape Design on the Sustainability Victoria Website - ESHousingManualCh10.pdf
Did you know that:
- Dense trees and shrubs can deflect strong winds and channel cooling summer breezes?
- A tree shading a window can reduce a room's temperature by up to 12 degrees celcius?
- Deciduous trees provide summer shade yet allow winter sun access?
- Winbreaks are most effective when located at 90 degrees to the direction of the wind?

Some very helpful points on this .pdf file linked above. If you're going to invest time in your horses and have a property, why not invest in planning and planting as well? It'll only benefit you.

"Love means attention, which means looking after the things we love. We call this stable management." - George H. Morris, The American Jumping Style

Online Equine Library

Boy am I having fun playing rather than behaving and heading off to bed. Have been strolling through horse sites/blogs and found one that listed horse related books that the person owned/had read and out of curiosity clicked on the link.

This lead me to Librarything.com - a site where you can build an online catalog of all the books you have, drawing information from the likes of Amazon.com. Now, as someone who has recently posted about building up my horse related library, this was totally appealing! Curious to know what I've got in my library? Check out the search I have placed on the right hand column of this page a bit further down. Example, type in the word 'polo' and see what happens... totally cool!:D

You can also have on your blog/site a random show of books in your library like so:


"You Know You're A Horse Person When... ...on rainy days, you organize the tack room, not the house. "

For Me

If you can't get something out of your own blog, what is the world coming to? So I have a huge obsession with books - namely, horse books. Surprised? I know - of course not!

Currently I have around 70 horse books in my collection - this is discluding all my magazines and catalogues from horse sales. I have been telling myself for the past 18 months that I won't buy any more until I've read all the ones I've got, but it just ain't gonna happen! I love purchasing horse books. Once I've got my property established, one of my dreams is to have a library with books from all over, about anything horse related!

So I have a request for anyone who reads this post:
- Help me to grow this collection of books
- Help me to establish a library that contains fiction books for all ages; non fiction books on any and every discipline, health issues, nutrition, breeding or anything else horsey!

How? Easy, send me an email or reply to this post with the title and/or author of a book that you have or have read that you feel would be an asset in anyone's horse library. If you really enjoyed it/learnt a lot from it; chances are I will too!

The more information you can provide, the better - Title, Author, Subject, even a link to where I can purchase the book online if you'd like! I look forward to your suggestions :D

"You Know You're A Horse Person When... you consider a golf course as a waste of good pasture land."